


Reasons to Return

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Light Bondage, infidelity or the appearance of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus, strict with himself even when it does not matter, insists on having three reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reasons to Return

There are always reasons to return. Severus, strict with himself even when it does not matter, insists on having three reasons before he goes to the Veil and looks through it. At least three – he needs more than that when the moon is full or if Lily's been over for tea or if there's a meeting of former potions masters that he should attend.  
  
Potter is an easy reason. It's hard to let go of looking after him, and Severus used that for the first year, always looking in on him before going on to watch _her_. But there's only so much of Potter that Severus can take, and watching him hand-in-hand with the Weasley brat, walking down Lover's Lane, or sitting with her at Fortescue's, both of them spooning sundaes into each other's mouths, is more than any man can bear. The reason lasts for a year before it is worn out.  
  
Severus measures the year by little Teddy Lupin's height, watching him grow. Time has no meaning behind the Veil, and Severus can count the hours of his afterlife in cups of tea drunk with Lily and Albus, in drifting dreams and the lazy movement of dust motes in the perpetual sunlight. Teddy is a better measure by far – he's walking before Severus knows it, tottering along on shaky legs before Severus has had five cups of tea.  
  
 _She_ watches Teddy learn to walk, and Severus watches her smile. He won't use her name, _can't_ use it, and she is the one who left him. She is the one who left. Still, Severus comes back to watch her, again and again. He has his reasons.  
  
She was the one who came to him during the war – that is one reason that holds true, no matter what passes in the world or in the afterlife. She believed, and she came to him.  
  
Severus's hand goes to his throat – scarred skin, but skin that she had touched. She had been sent to Hogwarts on a frivolous errand, something concocted by one of the few Order members still secret and working in the Ministry. She'd been there to check on him. She'd been sent to see if he could be saved, black-hearted murderer that he was.  
  
When he'd dismissed her, she only stumbled closer to him, tripping over her own feet. Her hand on Severus's throat, her fingers fluttering as she fought for balance, she had asked if she could see him again. Her hair flushed a pale shade of pink when he nodded.  
  
It was not a crusade, not an attempt to win him again to the Order. She'd asked to see him again, and had taken his refusal to meet at her flat or any public place. She'd come back to Hogwarts, creeping past the Carrows and the frightened, gaping students, slipping into his office after dinner. She had not asked for his truth or his trust – she had not accused him of killing Dumbledore. She had not called him a murderer.  
  
She sat with him, drinking tea under the watch of all the portraits who ringed the wall of his office. She waved at the half-hidden portrait of Dumbledore, the one portrait that Severus had hidden in the shadows, and she slipped a sherbet lemon out of the jar on his desk, but she hid her hand behind her back and only blinked at Severus when he stared at her.  
  
She pretended to be innocent. Severus knew better than that, but allowed her the charade. The charade, and nothing more.  
  
She looked at him, morphing until her eyes were wide and blue. She'd done this – she'd played this game with him, changing faces and changing masks, her body as fluid as her breath, even when half the world thought that she was heartsick for Remus Lupin.  
  
"The half of the world that counts," she said, blowing on her tea to cool it and acting as if she'd read his thoughts. Severus turned away from her, shuttering his eyes and raising his shields. Occlumency was cold and black and comforting – as chill and as safe as the dungeons, buried deep within the earth below the castle and far from those who wanted to hurt him.  
  
She swung her heels, hitting the legs of her chair, and set her teacup down with a clink. "Don't do that."  
  
She came up behind him, standing close enough for Severus to feel the heat of her body. Her hair was sharp and spiky – he reached out, trying to flatten it, and she swatted his hand away for his pains. "Don't do _that_ , either."  
  
Her breath was warm against Severus's neck – if he had leaned closer, he could have kissed her. He was close enough to do it. He moved away, standing in front of the shadowed portrait of Dumbledore and clasping his hands behind his back, glaring at her. "You're a married woman."  
  
"Married in the eyes of the world … the half of the world that doesn't count. You knew that when all of this started." She took a step closer to him, her hands on her hips and her head tilted to challenge him.  
  
It was as it needed to be – as Severus had needed it to be, all appearances correct – but appearances seldom mattered. _Needs_ didn't matter during war.  
  
Severus pushed her away – it was easy to do, and he caught her off balance. Her teacup rattled in its saucer when she stumbled back against the desk, and her tea spilled on the floor. Pale – more water than tea, really – Severus watched the rivulets make their way across the floor, pooling in the cracks between stones. Fawkes had perched there, and Dumbledore had stood _there_ when he made Severus promise–  
  
Promises were forever. They lasted forever, unbreakable … but even when Severus turned away from Tonks, she reached for him, grabbing his hand and forcing her fingers between his, twining the two of them together. It was as it needed to be – as they needed it to be – but she held on to him. That is the first reason.  
  
Breath and blood and bone, the body remembers. Severus's body, though it's long gone, remembers still – her touch, her fingers, her breath against his skin. He carries the memory still, safe in his soul. He remembers. He has enough reasons to remember.  
  
She came to him the very first time – in Grimmauld Place, on the dank and winding staircase that led down to the makeshift potions lab, in the middle of winter when skin was cold enough to crack and Severus's breath made white clouds, puffing close to her skin. She came to Severus – she bumped into him, in fact, and he caught her before she could push them both to the bottom of the stairs.  
  
"Miss Tonks."  
  
"Professor."  
  
She was still in his arms, her fingers on his shoulders and her face wreathed in the cobwebs that swung from the ceiling. She reached up to brush one out of her face, shifting closer to him. "Could I–"  
  
"Was there something you needed?" Severus said, pushing her upright and taking a step away from her. "I hardly need to remind you of all people that my lab is off-limits. You needn't come near the stairs."  
  
"I wanted to talk to you," she said. "Somewhere private, please."  
  
He let her into his lab and stood, staring at her, until she began to fidget. "It – I–"  
  
"Say it and be done with it," Severus said. "I have more important matters to–"  
  
It was the middle of the war, and they all had more important matters to attend to. Severus had watched her grow thin and gaunt, her hair paling from pink to mouse-brown, her face etched with lines that even her shape-shifting skills could not hide. She knew that he had better things to do.  
  
"Do you have any contraceptive potions?"  
  
Foolishness was not what he expected – not from her. He raised an eyebrow, but she stared straight back at him without flinching.  
  
"You see," she said, her voice loud in the small room, echoing off the walls, "I was hoping to have sex with you tonight."  
  
Severus blinked. Schoolgirls had asked him for potion after potion – for lust, for love, for contraception – but never this. Never … seduction. Tonks was stalking toward him now, all clumsy grace and bright eyes, her hips swaying as she came close enough to touch him. She put a hand on his chest, covering his heart, and tilted her head until she was looking straight up at him.  
  
"What about it, then?"  
  
Catching her hand in his own, Severus held it still, neither pulling her closer nor pushing her away. "Why?"  
  
"Because I fancy you, because there's a war on, because we could be dead tomorrow." Tonks threw her free hand up in the air and then let it fall, brushing Severus's shoulder on the way down. "Does there have to be a bloody reason for everything, Snape?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
She took a step forward, and then her lips were on his – her hands were on his chest, burrowing under his robes, warm against his skin – and then she pulled back, looking up at him. "Is that enough of a reason?"  
  
When he shook his head, his hair falling across his face, she pushed him back against his workbench, coming close until their bodies were pressed together, her hips grinding against his. She nipped his lower lip before moving to trail kisses down the length of his throat, unbuttoning his robes with awkward fingers as she went. "Is this enough of a reason?"  
  
Severus caught her fingers and held them in place, stiffening as she rocked against him. He pushed her away and she stumbled, catching herself on the opposite bench before she could fall to the floor. She blinked, gaping at him, and he took a deep breath before turning away from her.  
  
He strode to the cabinet in the far corner of the room, buttoning his robes as he went. He found the correct vial by touch, a squat round one sitting in its proper place on the shelf. "Here is the potion you desire," he said, holding it out to her. "Take it and go."  
  
She crossed the room to him and put her fingers on his wrist. "I didn't do that to get a bloody potion," she said. "I'm not – I wouldn't–"  
  
"I fail to see–"  
  
Kissing him again, Tonks pushed him up against the cabinet until his shoulder blades were pressed against the hard wood. He shoved her away, moving until they were far from the cabinet, and then pressed her up against the wall. "If you are playing some sort of game, Miss Tonks–"  
  
"Snape," she said, cutting him off and pulling him down until their lips were close enough for a kiss, "stop being such a bloody suspicious bastard."  
  
She kissed him hard, and she pulled him closer when he tried to move away. "This isn't a game."  
  
It became a game, trying to avoid her quick clever hands, trying to keep her pinned to the wall, struggling to escape when she flipped him around, trapping him – with a flick of her wand, she bound him there, catching him with ropes while her fingers worked on his buttons.  
  
"Old Auror's trick," she said, rolling her hips and winking at him. Her voice was pitched low, and rumbled in Severus's ear as she leaned in to nip his earlobe. "Useful in any number of situations."  
  
"I can imagine." She wasn't – she _was_ , and she had pulled Severus's robes off his shoulders, baring him to the cold air. She traced patterns on his skin as she kissed him, and nipped his lower lip, catching it between her teeth for a moment before she pulled away.  
  
"Trust me." She put her fingers to the curve of his lips and let her fingers trail down – the line of his throat, his breastbone, his ribs, his navel. Severus's skin burned where she touched him, a spark of heat in the chill.  
  
She slid down his body; her hands held his legs steady, her mouth on his prick, her nails digging into his skin. There would be half-crescent marks there when she was done, her marks on him – she stood, and his skin stung, and for the first time, Severus was sure of it.  
  
She lost her balance, stumbling, and Severus caught her, hooking one ankle around her hips to hold her steady. There were no more words – the language of blood and bone and breath was enough, with their bodies as close as they could come together. Every hitched breath, every gasp – every move that Tonks made, pressed against him, pushing him up against the wall as she rode him, it was more than words, more than words could say.  
  
That's the second reason – the reason why Severus comes back to the Veil to watch her. When it's memory after memory, when it's his own insubstantial hand on his spirit-flesh, remembering the way that she came to him, the way that she touched him – when it's a real memory, it's enough.  
  
There's no compulsion and no false, frivolous sentiment, nothing that lures him back here to watch her. But she is the one who came first to Severus, and she came to him time and again – he owes her this much.  
  
The last reason marks Severus's time behind the Veil – growing, learning, step by clumsy step. Little Teddy Lupin stumbles, still unsteady on his feet, and drags her down with him.  
  
They sprawl out on the green grass, a tangle of limbs as they roll together, and Severus blinks, watching them. He's known the feeling of morning-wet grass on skin, the first of the sunlight wan and lukewarm. He feels the sensations against his skin even now, ghost-like but real. Reason enough to return.  
  
He stays and watches as Tonks leads Teddy through the grass, past row after row of marble stones. When they stop, it is at a place Severus recognizes, and he is still and silent, feeling the Veil thrum between their world and his. They are so close to him.  
  
Teddy, as soon as they've settled onto the grass before the stone, winds his chubby arms around his mother's neck and demands a story. " _The_ story, mum," he insists when she gets it wrong.  
  
"Not a story about ducklings lost from a zoo and saved by a brave Auror?" she asks.  
  
"No. You know … _the_ story. The one about you and Dad."  
  
Severus waits and watches while she tells the story, listening as eagerly as Teddy. This is his story.  
  
"…and so your real father, being very brave, went to face Voldemort. And he told Harry what he needed to know to win the war, and he died so that the rest of us could live."  
  
Tonks bends over Teddy, magenta hair falling forward to hide her face. Severus leans closer, pressing against the thick muffling Veil. He is almost close enough to touch her – still too far away.  
  
"And Remus?" Teddy asks, prompting her when she stops.  
  
"And Remus was very brave too – he was almost killed in the battle, but before the curse could hit him, he felt something cold, like a ghost passing through him." Tonks looks up, blinking, and stares straight at Severus's headstone. "And that gave him enough of a warning to dodge the curse that would have killed him, and he pulled your mum out of harm's way too."  
  
"And then you both lived happily ever after," Teddy says.  
  
"Mostly happily ever after," Tonks says. There's a wrinkle, marring her forehead, as she closes her eyes and shifts her hair to a shade of blue that Severus recognizes. She once looked at him with bright blue eyes. She once reached out to touch him….  
  
"Maybe hopefully ever after is a better way to say it."  
  
"Hopefully ever after? That's not how the story ends!"  
  
Tonks just gives him a smile, running a hand through his hair. "Well, Teddy-bear, real life doesn't always give us happily ever after – but maybe someday, in some other world, we'll all meet again. Hopefully ever after is pretty good, don't you think?"  
  
She stands, hoisting Teddy, and walks over to the headstone. She trails two fingers over the white marble and then presses them to her lips, closing her eyes for a long moment. "Say goodbye to your father, Teddy."  
  
Severus's hand is caught in the Veil as he reaches out – thick and cobwebby, it snares him before he can reach out to touch Teddy's little fingers. He stays, waiting and watching, long after they are gone.  
  
 _Hopefully ever after._ Yes – there is still and always hope.  
  
 _She_ will come through the Veil, one day, and Severus will watch her until then, will be waiting for her then. There are always reasons to return.


End file.
